Thursday, August 27, 2015

When you consider the self-deception of the Federal Reserve, it's difficult to project whether or not it will raise interest rates in September.Even though global economic conditions are deteriorating, there has been no strong signal one way or the other on what Yellen is thinking.

Almost all of Asia is crashing. Countries with strong exposure to commodities, like Canada, Brazil, Russia and Australia are struggling, and Europe is weak as always. That leaves the U.S on its own. I don't see how it can maintain any semblance of growth in the near future.

One temporary answer would be for the government to increase spending like it did the last quarter to reinforce the illusion of a strong recovery. That never works over time though, which is good for gold.

As a matter of fact, if China and many other Asian countries work to strengthen their currencies by selling Treasuries en masse, even while they engage in a currency war, that would almost certainly halt the idea of raising interest rates, and some believe it may even initiate another round of quantitative easing. We all know what that would do to gold prices.

We must watch China in the weeks ahead, as it has already sold off over $100 billion in Treasuries over the last couple of weeks, and it's sure to continue to do so. Almost certainly other Asian nations will do the same, which has the potential to change the direction the Fed wants to go.

What's happening in Asia is countries are fighting to remain competitive with exports, which of course why they're devaluing their currencies. At the same time they don't want them to fall so much it wreaks havoc on imports and brings about higher inflation domestically, so they're selling Treasuries to support their respective currencies.That means Treasury yields are going to remain level or go up, which the Federal Reserve doesn't want to face when it comes time to make an interest rate decision.